Medieval

Since two decades now, medieval movies from Europe, Eastern Europe are galore, more gruesome one than the other, huge budgets for huge craps most of the time, available mainly un streaming platforms. Most of those lousy productions bet only on gruesome battles, bloody, brutal, battle scenes, where cruelty is the main word. Besides this, nothing at all, bad directing and I don't even speak of the acting. This one is from Czech Republic but seems to be co produced with UK film industry; it is spoken in English and stars Ben Foster and Michael Caine. So, it won't be a surprise if I say it is not for the sissies, it is bloody, with man details concerning meat chopper fight sequences. But the story is not that bad for such a film, not that bad. However, it will never make me forget THE WARLORD, starring Chuck Heston; FLESH AND BLOOD from director Paul Verhoeven, or any Ridley Scott's movie for this scheme.

Well I never heard of this Czech warlord. Ben Foster did a good job portraying him. The production of this movie is good, with some well directed battle scenes, good acting from the entire cast, and a normally interesting story. The problem I had with the movie is how confusing it gets sometimes. I really tried to concentrate but it's just not an easy told story. If you're into medieval movies though it's certainly worth a watch. The costumes and the sceneries are very good, the battles gruesome but excellently filmed so you can't really go wrong with Medieval. Too bad the story was a bit confusing.

Unlike most of the negative low ratings against this movie that almost made me decide to not viewing it and, even when I finally decided to give it a try, my expectation was still not quite high enough to give it a full shot. But this movie turned out to be pretty good actually. Yes, this movie got a serious audio and soundtrack problems. The dialog between or among the characters sometimes was too low or too vague to be heard clearly, and most of the time was blocked by the annoying loud soundtrack which supposedly should be in the background and subtle enough to support the ongoing of the story, but sadly, the music often played too loud and over-the-top dominant over the scenes, and lot of times too religiously annoying. It also made me wonder if the production team hired a qualified enough audio professional group to handle the recording or microphone. It seems that there were lot of times, the microphone was placed either too far away or too high to record the characters dialog so that always ended up either too vague or too low to be heard clearly. The crew who took care of the audio part of this movie should never be hired by any other movie makers in case to cause the similar problems.

There are so many negative reviews against this movie, but to me, it's a decent and seriously made one, at least worth watching once for your time and money. Ben Foster did a very good job, but the screenplay didn't give him too much to develop and show the character he played. Michael Caine also faithfully did his part, even it's such a weightless role. Sophie Lowe also acted well for her tragic role in this movie, but luckily, her character was much well developed as the storyline went on.

The fighting scenes are well arranged, brutal, bloody and realistic enough to make you cringe sometimes. Again, the faulty audio almost ruined everything!

Instead, it felt generic, rushed with over emphasis on fighting. This is a true story, based on real events and real people. We have the historical data on all of them yet in the movie, they are vaguely mentioned in intro and outro credits.

The in between or the movie itself is a random series of fights between groups that are not developed well; we feel no emphathy for them, nor do we even know who they are. The movie is also not historically accurate in terms of setting, mannerism, props. It is just generic medieval fighting movie with a backstory that the viewer has to create in their mind as they watch. If you do that, it becomes better sure, but on its own, as a movie as presented, it lacks a lot.

The events this attempts to cover are pivotal for the time and could have easily been on the level of development we saw in braveheart and gladiator; but alas they opted for shallowness. Acting is not great, not bad but not great, acceptable at best. If it were not based on the true events it attempts to cover, it would have stood better for what it was. Unfortunately the creators trying to make it real life historical completely bombed the pooch here. There was no need for it because there is no history in this movie; none, at all. I guess they felt it added extra importance to the movie by telling us who it was about and what events it tried to convey but that's about it. Few lines on the screen that do not match what we saw, do not a historical movie make.

It is watchable, just highly disappointing, having ruined such an amazing potential story. I understand it is difficult to properly convey things so far back in history where records were so vague about a lot of things, however look at how other movies approached it. This simply does not even feel in the right time period. It feels a lot like generic sword fight at your local fair ground. Granted the fighting was not horrible but again, without any other context being done proper, it just becomes a generic sword fight movie.

Medieval is helped by a restrained yet captivating performance from Ben Foster. Even better is the production design and costumes; it's a very good-looking, immersive, realistic production.

It's a film that has some impressive moments of intense action and several compelling scenes. But the film can't help but crumble under the weight of its convoluted storytelling.

The plot revolves around a soldier caught in the midst of the political scheming between two brothers who seek to be emperor, and how he and those he leads are forced to suffer the consequences of their scheming.

When I put it that way, it sounds simple; but that's not how it plays out on screen.

The films does a lamentably poor job of establishing its multiple antagonists and their respective loyalties, motivations, and especially how they seek to achieve their goals.

This is largely due in part to an absurd amount of name-dropping that gets difficult to follow. There are certain characters whose names are crucial to the plot but these characters themselves are rarely, and sometimes never, seen.

It's unclear what role everyone is playing in the story because there are so many people to keep track of and the script doesn't properly develop any of them.

Not even the action is particularly exciting. It's mostly clumsily filmed and opaquely edited, leaving the impact of every sword swing and arrow pierce off screen. It's action without weight or a sense of significance.

By the end of the movie, I felt nothing, because the story concludes without anything of note having changed for either the characters or for the political situation we've been following.

It's a largely dull experience without clear stakes and without clear goals and without any meaningful depth of character or theme.

I see why there was virtually no marketing for this whatsoever.